...add that last post to the list that suggests not paying attention to Frank in the future...)
— Banno

Wow. — frank

You are being cancelled because you believed your own senses, rather than what emperor Dennett told you to believe... How dared you? :-)

I'm still not sure how you expect to point at something somewhere in a human interacting with their environment and say, "Right there! That's the quale." — Srap Tasmaner

Qualia are always plural (to me anyway, like data), and private so you cannot actually point at them. But you can perceive them.

Actually, that phrase: "something it is like to..." is what does violence to the language. It's a recent invention found almost only in philosophical discourse, and so is inherently fraught. — Banno

There's an excellent paper on this. Obviously Hacker's https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/philosophy/article/is-there-anything-it-is-like-to-be-a-bat/EC6290746D630C343A661C8C0F4D8B8E, but that leaves the possibility of technical language, which is demolished in https://philpapers.org/rec/JONWII-4 .

Worth a read for those that haven't already, the ideas there are germane to this discussion.

What It's Like To Be An Italian

... would be an interesting topic for a philosophy book. I doubt it would bring more clarity than similar books about bats. There are quite a few Italians left, COVID notwithstanding, some 60 million of them, and supposedly their subjective experience varies at the individual level, and from one day to the next.

But one thing it's like to be an Italian is to positively loathe other nations' coffee making and drinking behaviors, seen as nothing less than reprehensible, if not barbarian. An "americano" is explicitly a strange custom from a stranger's land; to drink a cappuccino after lunch is downright blasphemy; and people drinking machine coffee in a plastic cup deserve help.

Likewise, I can't think of a good reason why bats can't have their moods and tastes and even perhaps their philosophies. Some of them may be nihilists for all we know. "I seriously doubt our representation of the world has any reality, ya kna? It's all an illusion, a trick based on sound reverberation."

So what it's like to be a bat probably depends on the specific bat, and on the moment. Some nights are better than others...

What use are they for what? Qualia are "the way things seem to us". Why do they need to have a use?
— Luke

Because they're a word and words without uses are meaningless — Isaac

If the word "qualia" has no use, then what are we talking about? What is Dennett talking about?

Can "the way things seem to us" be theoretical?
— Luke

It is only theoretical. We can only tell the story of how things were, not how things are. Our brains simply don't work in real time. and that story of how things were is filtered through several theories. — Isaac

Perhaps our conscious minds "don't work in real time", but why do our brains not work in real time?

so you cannot actually point at them. But you can perceive them. — Olivier5

So those who don’t perceive them are the ones who don’t trust their senses?

Thanks for clarifying. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I take the "perceptual relationship" to be the perception itself — Luke

Yes, that's what I meant. I chose "perceptual relationship" over "perception" because it seems to me I have many perceptual relationships but only one aggregate of them. I wanted to avoid collapsing all of perception into my beholding of the coffee cup.

and I further assume that the perception has properties, such as seeing a red flower, or tasting bitter coffee. Would it be problematic to refer to these properties of perception as the qualia?

I don't think so? Care required though, there's all the stuff we've spoken about regarding the individuation of components of perception.

I assume the response will be that it might mislead us to think that such properties are subjective rather than objective, and that if the flower is perceived as red or if the coffee is perceived as bitter, then each of them really are red and bitter. Except that's not how everyone perceives them? — Luke

What do you mean by subjective and objective here? How are the two distinguished? I'm asking because Dennett's position is taken as undermining the distinction between those two, so it should be hard to understand in those terms. (Edit: though I do recall him using the phrase "objective properties" in a paper!)

If you're using "objective" as a placeholder for "all property types", I'd agree with you. If "objective" imputes constraints on the types of property considered and our access to them, I guess I wouldn't.

The main sticking point for me is the definition of privacy that I gave earlier. Qualia or not, conscious experience is surely private in the sense that nobody else can experience (or "see") your conscious experience. Nobody can look into your skull and compare whether you see red the same as they do. — Luke

Yes, I find the privacy bit in the article the hardest to grok properly. I think Dennett's left a lot of conceptual work to the reader to understand the inferences he's making. I'll try and write something detailed about it. What I understand of it gestures in this direction:

Dennett wants to block the inference from "It only happened to me" to "Only I can have information about it", I think the latter is the aspect of privacy that Dennett's arguing against. And it's focussed upon the "can" rather than "Only I have information about it".

Like the mental image I get automatically when I feel a strong sense of disgust. It somehow superimposes itself over my vision and looks like dark cracks cutting across my visual field, but they have no depth or distance from me. It happens to me (private in that sense), but now you have information about it (you have some flavour of access to it, but not /my/ perceptual relationship to it).

Here's another way to put the issue with your bacon and walnuts example: what you're trying to model, or should be, is learning, and I'm deeply skeptical that learning is just recording earlier instances and referring back to them.

I'm deeply skeptical that learning is just recording earlier instances and referring back to them. — Srap Tasmaner

I am a learning specialist of sorts... An effective, logical and well grounded philosophical approach to learning must involve Phenomenology, and due attention to and respect for subjective experience as the font of all knowledge, as I said. Behaviors are secondary to subjective experience, which must take center stage.

So those who don’t perceive them are the ones who don’t trust their senses? — Mww

Yes, in short. They question their own senses a bit too much. Real things are simpler than all this mad neurosurgeon literature, because biology places severe constraints. Senses are there for a reason, which is to help the animal navigate the world. They can be trusted, they keep us alive every day.

Behaviors are secondary to subjective experience, which must take center stage. — Olivier5

I expect you know more about the field than I do, but I would be surprised to learn that biology backs you up on this.

The biologist bases his knowledge on observation, which implies subjectivity. He trusts his own senses and his own intellect, subjective and biological as they are. He is only behaviorist from a methodological standpoint. He cannot ask oak trees how it feels like to shed one's leaves at the end of summer, so he has to content himself with watching the phenomenon happen, but if he could ask them oaks, he would. And in fact, biologists specialised in human beings (medical doctors) do ask their patients how they feel all the time.

Senses are there for a reason, which is to help the animal navigate the world. They can be trusted, they keep us alive every day. — Olivier5

It's not the senses that are the problem here. It's the accounting malpractice thereof.

I would try to take this seriously, but you seem to have settled into thinking of yourself as the spokesman for life and flavor and joy and everyone on the other side is some dreary life-denying ivory-tower dweller.

That's all horseshit, of course. If anything, you're the one neglecting the body and thinking exclusively in terms of the mind, consciousness sovereign of all, center of the universe. If that strikes you as a mischaracterization of your position, maybe you'd be willing to reconsider all this "denying the senses" crap you've posted.

you seem to have settled into thinking of yourself as the spokesman for life and flavor and joy and everyone on the other side is some dreary life-denying ivory-tower dweller.

That's all horseshit, of course. — Srap Tasmaner

It's not horseshit. To deny one's subjectivity is by definition to deny one's own life.

To deny one's subjectivity is by definition to deny one's own life. — Olivier5

Denying the usefulness of the subjective/objective dichotomy is to deny one particular accounting practice. One's own life is much more than an accounting practice.

you're the one neglecting the body and thinking exclusively in terms of the mind, consciousness sovereign of all, center of the universe. — Srap Tasmaner

I hope you don't mind me butting in, but mind and body are one. There is no separation - one cannot exist without the other. If you accept that consciousness is self organization, it all subsumes to self organization.

Right, because sexual partners have prior to recent philosophy readings never asked each other, "what was it like for you?" — javra

Two behaviorists make love. At the end one of them says: "It was good for you. How was it for me?"

Denying the usefulness of the subjective/objective dichotomy is to deny one particular accounting practice. — creativesoul

Accounting by whom and to whom?

We always return to the subject.

My last reply concerning subjectivity still stands, unmolested and strong.

consciousness sovereign of all, center of the universe. — Srap Tasmaner

I'm no idealist. Consciousness rules not the universe. Animals endowned with it use it for their own highly integrative analysis and action orientation. They often make mistakes, too.

Your what?

So those who don’t perceive them are the ones who don’t trust their senses?
— Mww

Yes, in short. — Olivier5

So if I reject the notion of qualia, but insist my senses are generally trustworthy, I’m just deluding myself? Or maybe it’s the other way around...... if my senses are generally trustworthy in themselves, then I am only deluding myself in the rejection of qualia?

As much as I’m willing to admit to deluding myself upon proper grounds, it remains much more parsimonious, methinks, to allow perceiving its dependability, dismiss qualia as something conditioned by perceiving, and fault understanding a posteriori or judgement a priori, for whatever cognitive errors I make. Things just run smoother that way.

Given that we both acknowledge the occurrence of the word "quality" in the English language (you've made use of it), and if in your view conscious experiences do not consist of quality, where does quality take place?

Or is it your view that quality does not take place anywhere, that it has no occurrence, thereby making the term fully meaningless to you? — javra

Quality is not the sort of thing that takes place. It is a standard borne of comparison/contrast.

Accounting by whom and to whom?

We always return to the subject. — Olivier5

And evidently forget where we've already been. You invoked "subjectivity". I argued for it's uselessness as a means to further discriminate between our differing claims about conscious experience.

You returned...

Evolve. Grow lungs. Get out of the subjective waters.

mind and body are one. — Pop

Personally, I find the dual process account pretty convincing, so I think there's lots of stuff going on with us we aren't aware of. If you want to include all of that under "mind", and I would, then I agree wholeheartedly. The disembodied mind is an abstraction.

To deny one's subjectivity is by definition to deny one's own life. — Olivier5

Geez Louise. Of course I'm not denying my own subjectivity. On the other hand, sense experience is not a subject-object affair; it's an interaction of organism and environment.

https://www.imprint.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Farrell_Open_Access.pdf

Qualia seem to meet the three criteria set out for a technical term.

You invoked "subjectivity". I argued for it's uselessness as a means to further discriminate between our differing claims about conscious experience. — creativesoul

So your conscious experience is not subjective? Is that what you say?

sense experience is not a subject-object affair; it's an interaction of organism and environment — Srap Tasmaner

That's just another way to say the same thing though.

You are being cancelled because you believed your own senses, rather than what emperor Dennett told you to believe... — Olivier5

Not so much. More because he used an ad pop that turned out to be wrong.

This is what it's like talking to these Dennet types:

Does it hurt when you stub your toe?
Qualia is incoher-
No, does it hurt when you stub your toe?
When we talk about reporting-
No, does it hurt when you stub your toe?
The neurological states invol-
No, does it hurt when you stub your toe?
Define-
No, does it hurt when you stub your toe?
....................yes.
How does the brain produce that feeling of pain when you stub your toe?
It doesn't hurt when I stub my toe.